Beastly Drabbles
by Harry Potter Fan 1994
Summary: A collection of shorts. Ch.1: Eye contact (Newt lacks it). Ch.2: Dancing (Newt is proficient at more than just mating dances). Ch.3: Fear (In which Tina encounters a boggart.)
1. Eye Contact

On anyone else, such shifty eyes would have looked suspicious.

Tina knew better. Rather, she knew there was nothing all that suspicious about Newt Scamander besides his penchant for smuggling magical beasts across international borders. What she did not know was why he was afraid to meet her eyes, even now.

Upon his return to the States, he'd asked if he could 'court' her, which she had found whimsical and flattering and had been delighted to accept. He had been in New York for two months so far. His appeal to include his textbook at Hogwarts had been successful, but the battle to do so in the much more stringent, MACUSA-directed Ilvermorny curriculum was taking considerably longer. This worked out quite well for Tina, as their free time was pleasantly spent in his suitcase and/or her apartment.

This was one of the occasions that they were in both places. Tina had carried Newt's suitcase up to her rooms with the aforementioned wizard inside, happily tending to his creatures. She climbed down into his one-room hut as he finished fussing over the baby occamies. He had told Tina he had named the newest hatchling Jacob II, which sounded quite regal as the others were named things like Nugget and Spiffy.

They sat on the ground outside with Pickett the bowtruckle. Pickett had a lot of concerns and complaints, and was currently airing them to Newt. To his credit, Newt was trying very hard to take them seriously.

"Well, Pickett, if Nob takes your branch then you should politely ask him to move…Don't call him that, you know what he'd do if he heard you…I'm not getting involved. They'll pick on you more if they think you're a tattletale."

"Pickett," Tina said gently as the irritated bowtruckle crossed his thin arms. "You need to stand up for yourself. Newt can't fight all your battles for you." The creature squeaked crossly. "What did he say?"

"Something along the lines of, 'You're not my real mum.'" He shrugged and gave her his trademark apologetic smile.

"Well," she replied, her tone overdramatically affronted, "Far be it from me to offer advice to those who clearly don't want it." She turned her head away.

Newt hid a smile as the poor bowtruckle wilted with guilt. He lifted Pickett to Tina's shoulder, onto which the little tree-dweller crept to hug her neck. Tina accepted it, stroking his back with her finger. Her twinkling eyes locked with Newt's for a fraction of a second before he averted his gaze to somewhere by her left elbow.

Disconcerted by so common an occurrence, she asked, "Newt?"

"Yes?"

"Do you still feel shy with me?"

Pickett normally wanted to be the center of attention at these small gatherings, but he too waited for an answer, clinging to a lock of Tina's hair.

"No," answered Newt, mildly confused. "Why? Do you feel shy with me?"

"No." She struggled to ask the question on her mind without sounding like she was prying, and faltered.

"Alright, then." Tina could see his mind working, trying to resolve this conversation with what little he knew about cues and context—half persuading himself that this exchange was perfectly normal, and half feeling like she had something else to say.

"Sometimes you don't look at me," she blurted.

Newt's eyes widened in surprise and he did look at her for an instant—then, characteristically, away. "Oh."

"It's not a bad thing, I just thought—am I making you uncomfortable? Am I—"

"No." He was fidgeting with the grass despite his denial. They sat in silence for a while as Tina silently cursed herself. There were a thousand ways she could have put that better, though she couldn't think of a single one right now.

"If I don't need to, I don't," Newt explained finally. "Someone once told me I was too easy to read. And proved it."

Tina knew that 'someone' was the woman whose photograph was no longer in his suitcase. She never asked about Leta, figuring he would tell her about it if he wanted to.

"Queenie doesn't think you're very easy to read."

Newt nodded. "Not anymore. I trained in Occlumency for a while after Hogwarts." He smiled. "Also, Queenie doesn't try very hard." He turned his head towards her, to check if she was smiling too. She wasn't, and he fixed his stare on his knees. "I was never very good at Occlumency," he admitted, continuing. "But there are tricks to make it easier. Some tricks are just habit now." He stopped picking at the grass—one of his tricks, she realized, to distract his mind from the thoughts that others could get at. "It never seemed worth letting people know anything more about me than they needed to."

"I understand. I was just worried that I was doing something wrong."

"You're not," he assured her, taking on a lighter tone. "It's actually a very helpful trait for a magizoologist. Many animals don't like to be looked in the eye." Pickett, now bored, was making a fuss again, and Newt took him back. "Pickett, I'm putting you back on the tree now. We need to eat dinner…Because it's not healthy for you to spend all your time with humans…That's your brother you're talking about, don't be rude…It's absolutely unacceptable to call _anyone_ a steaming pile of erumpent—"

Tina laughed at the bowtruckle's impressive vocabulary. She had a deep belly laugh that used to make her feel self-conscious before Newt had told her he'd never heard such a laugh from another woman and he quite liked its sincerity. She tickled and teased the bowtruckle for a few seconds, aware that Newt was taking advantage of the distraction to absorb every detail of her face. She let him until it was too hard not to glance up. He held her gaze for a moment, his eyes heavy-lidded and soft and warm, and she realized he truly was very easy to read.


	2. Dancing

"Have you gotten your ticket, then?" Tina asked Newt. They were a few days out from the mass Obliviation, and the hole left by Jacob's amnesia had not quite filled itself with other things. And now they would lose another.

"Yes. The ship departs Saturday," he answered as he continued writing in his notebook on the girls' dining table. The exact details of the Swooping Evil venom's effects on humans were meticulously noted in there, and his week long study of the No-Majs post-administration had determined that there were no harmful side effects.

"Oh." It came out heavier than she had intended. He looked up briefly, catching her downtrodden expression.

For a while there was silence. Tina gripped the back of an empty chair, trying to come up with something to say.

"Are you alright?" Newt asked finally.

"Yes. Fine," she hurriedly answered. "Just...recently got bad news."

She didn't know why she lied. She doubted he would've thought too much of it if she said she was going to miss him.

"What bad news is that?"

"Well," Tina began slowly, "I've been reinstated...which is good news, but now I have to attend the MACUSA Christmas dinner and they've given me the first dance because of my involvement in your case."

"Isn't that an honor?"

"I hate dancing."

"I see." He seemed amused. "I suppose it's not for everyone." He returned to noting examples of some particularly artistic No-Majs incorporating angry, swirling black clouds into their works since the Obliviation.

"Is it for you? Dancing?"

"Yes. I quite like it." Newt sat thoughtfully for a second and then pointed his wand at the radio, which began playing a slow number by the Bewitching Boys. He got up from the table, rolled up his sleeves, and stepped into an area with some space. His right hand went to an imaginary partner's waist, and his left to join her nonexistent one. Tina laughed as he started swaying to the music.

"You're going to dance all by yourself?"

"I always do. Not usually in front of other people, but I thought it might cheer you up." He gave his fake partner a twirl, which made Tina laugh some more. She came over to rest her hand on his shoulder and clasp the other one.

"I thought you didn't like dancing?" he said, placing his free hand on her hip.

"I can't let you have all of this fun alone."

The saxophone's crooning washed over them as they danced in circles in the small space they had. Tina let Newt lead and they kept perfect time, never once going out of sync with the other. Both of them were smiling stupidly and neither knew why. This was the first time Tina had been so close to him for so long. She couldn't stop staring into his light green eyes. She felt like she hadn't blinked for a while until they stepped out and then he spun her back into his arms. Her body was pressed up against his wiry frame, and her hand on his chest could feel that his heart was beating as fast as her own. Their noses were almost touching. He was looking at her lips and she at his. Something like magnetism was pulling them ever closer together.

Suddenly, Newt turned his head away, towards the door. "Queenie is waiting outside." He took a small step back and disentangled himself from Tina.

The aforementioned sister walked in with a bag of groceries, looking guilty. "I'm sorry, I just...you Brits are really good at knowing when someone is in your head."

Tina shook off her disappointment. It was better nothing had happened. He was leaving on Saturday. "Do you need help putting those away, Queenie?"

"No, I'm fine." The blond girl was still beating herself up over interrupting.

"Right," said Newt, sitting back down at his table. He picked up his quill and put it down again. "It's a shame you don't like it, Tina. You're a beautiful dancer."

Tina blushed, and a wicked grin crossed Queenie's face. "Well of course she is, honey. She used to be a student dance instructor before every Christmas Ball we had at Ilvermorny."

Newt's surprise was evident when he glanced at Tina, but she had already looked innocently away.


	3. Fear

Thank you for your reviews! I just wanted to add...wish Tina's name had been Ella; this ship would've been NewtElla and everything would've been perfect. Enjoy the last chapter (at least til the next movie)!

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Tina had grown to love helping Newt take care of his creatures each day. She'd never been a big animal person before, but his were all so affectionate and happy it was hard not to like them. She split the work with him, only taking the simpler jobs because he was so much more adept at the complicated rituals involved before feeding some of the feistier beasts. Because of this division of labor, it was a while before she discovered the wardrobe.

She was wandering after feeding the mooncalves, and came across a habitat that appeared to be a large closet. The closet only contained one piece of furniture. Large, brown, with intricate carvings and surrounded by an eerie aura of foreboding, the wardrobe was shut, but shaking, as though there was something _in_ there.

"Dougal?" called Tina. "Is that you?"

There was no answer-not that there would be if Dougal was, in fact, the culprit. However, the wardrobe stayed shut. Slowly and quietly, Tina reached up to the twin knobs in the center and pulled the doors open.

The space inside was larger than she had imagined, and contained a familiar-looking chair. On the floor was a silvery fluid that immediately began leaking out and running towards her, though the ground had no slope. She took several steps back. In front of her eyes, the chair's legs began dissolving where they contacted the unknown substance.

 _It's the death potion._ "Merlin," she breathed.

The chair had been reduced to a seat and a back. The fluid continued to come at her, and then started to rise in a wave as tall as her knees, her hips, her shoulders. She screamed as she stumbled back into the adjacent habitat, unintelligibly at first, and then she finally formed one word: "NEWT!"

Within seconds, he was there, pushing her behind him. The liquid retreated quickly back towards the wardrobe, but instead of returning to the wardrobe, it disappeared inside a suitcase Tina hadn't noticed was there. Newt's suitcase. But...they were already in his suitcase...

The suitcase remained open, and suddenly from inside swelled a horrible noise-the sound of hundreds of Newt's animals screaming in agony. Tina could hear cries and howls and roars of pain from inside and it broke her heart. Newt clenched his jaw for a second, and then pointed his wand at the suitcase, shouting, " _Riddikulus!"_

All of a sudden, the animal noises became a rousing chorus of "Lumos when you're here, Nox when you're not" by Wanda Rhymes, accompanied by erumpent trumpets and hoof beats for drums.

 _And a light goes on inside my heart  
When you keep me warm inside your arms  
Just so we never spend a second apart  
I might use a couple Summoning Charms..._

Newt relaxed and went over to pick up the suitcase, put it in the wardrobe, and shut the door. Then he turned to Tina, whose hands were on her chest, trying to calm the frantic rhythm of her heartbeats. "Are you alright, Tina?"

"W-what was that?"

"A boggart," he explained. "No one knows what they really look like, but they take the form of what the viewer fears most." He came closer and held her shoulders. "Nothing you saw was real. It wouldn't have hurt you. You're safe."

She didn't feel safe. "It turned into the death potion from my execution."

"I know. I'm sorry I didn't warn you." Tina must have still looked frightened out of her skin, because he pulled her into a hug and started stroking her hair. "You're safe now. Don't worry. You're safe."

It did feel very nice, being in his arms and hearing him speak softly in her ear. He probably used this technique on many frightened animals. But she was not a frightened animal. She was an Auror of MACUSA, and she was not going to meet her match against a fake potion. She pushed him away with a look of fierce determination.

"Bring it out again."

"Tina..." Newt warned, aghast. "It's best if...well..."

"What was the spell you used? Ridiculous?" She readied her wand.

" _Riddikulus_ ," Newt corrected. "The boggart loses its power to scare you if you laugh. Are you sure about this?"

"Yes."

With obvious hesitation, Newt walked back to the wardrobe and opened one of the doors. Again, the metallic fluid seeped out, coming for her. Tina tried to swallow her fear, but her wand arm was shaking. _Laugh_ , she reminded herself. But how could one laugh in the face of death?

The liquid surrounded her, rising higher and higher and threatening to engulf her. Although it never touched her, she could feel her panic building. Newt moved towards her, wand in hand, but she waved him away. "Stay back! I can do this."

As it rose higher and higher, she calmed herself and then shouted, " _Riddikulus!_ " The silvery walls that encased her turned into solid funhouse mirrors, in which her image was stretched and squashed and generally quite...ridiculous.

Tina gave a surprised snort of laughter. She exchanged triumphant glances with Newt. With a swish of his wand, Newt crumbled the mirrors into shards and then siphoned the pieces back into the wardrobe. Tina closed the doors, perhaps a bit more firmly than she needed to.

"That was brave of you," Newt told her. "It took me quite a while to get past the illusion. Even now, it's hard."

"Thank you." She hadn't realized the terror of her imminent death had stayed with her long after the events at MACUSA. Her narrow escape hadn't seemed remotely possible when Newt had suggested it as he set free the Swooping Evil to catch her when she jumped. But Newt had been there to allay her fears, just as he had done now. Tina smiled at him. "You know, I am feeling a lot braver."

To prove it, she grabbed him by the collar and pressed her lips to his.


End file.
